I got my account suspended for violating community standards (presumably the pseudonym one), which meant my Gmail and other Google services were suspended too. I asked for it to be reviewed and my account was reactivated, I posted on this (explaining why I may vanish never to return), it was then back to awaiting review, the post disappeared but I was back in again. All very confusing but it does show that if you have your account deactivated it is worth appealing. I have posted a few thoughts here, we'll see if I'm still around later today, it is quite a little adventure not knowing you will be disappeared at any moment (without all the "unpleasantness" of it being an evil despot doing it, although I suppose that depends on how you feel about Google ;) ).

It's certainly caused a few "who is this guysthat's following me?? Oh wait, he's so and so from Whitechapel" moments for us all.

As your comment you enter Emperor kind of applies to me too... Bob Cluness is my preferred name that's i've used most my adult life (and Icelandbob is my internet pseudonym), but it is not my legal name. If i have to start using my legal name in order for me to be verified on google+, then that's just a ballache i can do without.

On a lighter note, i did a cloud computing experiment using google docs, and it seemed to go well. Simply posted a review i did, changed the sharing options so it people could view it with a link, then did a quick share message to Whitechapelers only (good old circles) as i didn't want my editor to see it yet. Yup people could see it and if i changed the settings, they could alter it too.

It's fast becoming a power business/collaboration tool, like MS Office with knobs on. I could definitely see the guys at Weaponizer using something like this when working on editing fiction pieces or their magazine....

And that is the problem for them really. If I was a stalker or a stealth spammer I'd sign up under a plausible sounding name and go about my merry way until discovered, when I'd do the same all over again. So not only will their policy do nothing to address their stated concerns about spam or preventing fake accounts (how do they know my name isn't really John Depp or William Gates?), but it is impossible to enforce. I'm still hoping they see sense over this one. The fact that I somehow got my account reactivated might be a good sign, or not. I wonder if 50 Cent if next and God help Frank Quitely, Jock or Mobius if they ever sign up (D'Israeli is already there).

Awesome conversation that you linked to over on G+ Emperor.... though mildly disconcerting that it got overrun by furries at one point..... It will be interesting to see how they end up handling this.

Ironically, on here and G+ I don't use my real picture, but on facebook I do. But I also use facebook for self-promotion a lot. I identify more with my avatar on here and G+ than my real photo though. Confusing in someways even to myself.

I see G+ as far more likely to be useful in actually connecting with people. Facebook is simply games and promotion at this point, at least for me. I have family that use it to connect with people... but I find that hard to do between farmville updates and ads for shit I'm barely even remotely interested in.

In the interest of A: testing google's "theory" and B: taking a small stance against their "if it's fake, report it" pseudo-policy... changed my name on G+ to what I'm usually referred to by on the interwebs.

Awesome conversation that you linked to over on G+ Emperor.... though mildly disconcerting that it got overrun by furries at one point..... It will be interesting to see how they end up handling this.

Well the furries help demonstrate another angle - people with interests that are often the butt of jokes probably don't feel free to express themselves on Facebook because family and co-workers might not understand. Google+ gives them the opportunity to take part in a social network without being judged (I've heard that some people sign up more than one Facebook account to achieve this). Now I don't think they'd need to use a pseudonym, as they could use circles to keep their lives separate, but they may also want to keep their real world name separate from the one they use in furrydom (as it stands someone can see the people in your "furry" circle so it wouldn't be too secret at the moment), plus I fully expect at least one technology failure to reveal all your circles, so be careful with ones you might have made for fun that you don't want people to discover, like "utter wankers" or "deathlist."

It is an interesting point Jonathan Chalker makes towards the (current) end of that thread - Google+ seems to be really taking off amongst creative people, so banning pseudonyms seems a bad idea as there are all sorts of aliases used. Unless you are going to start peppering your guidelines with so many loopholes it looks like Swiss cheese (so musician's names, DJ's names, pen names, screen names, etc. are OK, other uses aren't?).

It's fast becoming a power business/collaboration tool, like MS Office with knobs on. I could definitely see the guys at Weaponizer using something like this when working on editing fiction pieces or their magazine....

I can see this being very powerful as part of Google Enterprise. If I was a small business, I'd look quite seriously into using Google Apps, as I think the licensing model is quite attractive, and giving your users tools they can be familiar with outside work is smart, although I guess a lot of people would want more failsafe separation between the two... They also seem to move very fast as well, incorporating stuff from Wave into their apps suite pretty quickly - even though that experiment didn't last, the 'simultaneous typing in one document' feature for example made it through. The hangout thing worked too as a quick and simple videoconference facility.

I'm often pretty wary of Google (the naming thing and the idea that they can throw you off all services for a percieved breach of TOS in one gives them a degree of control I wouldn't be that comfortable with if I was dependent on their services to make a living), but they're also highly impressive and innovative...